"The first parkways – Eastern Parkway and Ocean Parkway – were part of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr. and Calvert Vaux' 1868 Plan for Brooklyn's Prospect Park (to which a Centennial Medallion was given last year). But these were really boulevards for carriages to enhance the neighborhoods through which they passed, and to provide access to the countryside. Parkways really evolved with the advent of the automobile and pleasure driving at the turn of the 20 th century. New York was among the very first to design limited-access, free-flowing and independent roadways, with grade-separated intersections, running through linear park-like corridors.

The British planner Thomas Adams and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. recommended limited-access landscaped parkways to link the city's larger parks in 1907. The Bronx River Parkway was the first to be designed, though not completed until 1923 due to World War I. It was extraordinarily prophetic of future thruway design:

• The road traversed an elongated park

• Abutting property owners had no right of access

• Intersecting streets crossed the parkway on bridges

• Special ramps were built for exits and entrances, and

• A winding free-flowing alignment was fitted to the topography and related to an established design speed – 35mph – ample at the time.

"Other parkways followed in the 1920s and 1930s – the Hutchinson, Saw Mill, Grand Central and the Taconic, north of the city. From this spot we overlook the Henry Hudson Parkway and look across the Hudson River to the Palisades and the Palisades Parkway. On Long Island, there are the Meadowbrook, Northern and Southern State, Wantagh State, and so on. By 1934, there were some 134 miles of parkways in Queens, Nassau and Westchester Counties. By 1940, Robert Moses had completed 300 miles of parkways in New York City.

" In all of these landscape architects worked with engineers and planners to refine the internal geometry of roadways, medians and interchanges, with the design of bridges and overpasses, and fit them to the external random and undulating topography of the landscape, to reveal its most attractive, dramatic and beautiful scenic features. Among them were Hermann Merkel and Michael Rapuano on the Bronx River, Clarke and Rapuano on the Westchester County and New York City parkways, Clarence Coombs on the Palisades, and Charles J. Baker on the Taconic.

"They and others saw the possibilities of a new landscape of movement and speed: a contemporary version of the pioneers' original experience of riding over and through the landscape – diving into valleys, emerging on the crests of hills, seeking the cool pastures of the forest, or shooting straight across sunlit plains. Lawrence Halprin was to write: “Freeways out in the countryside, with their graceful, sinuous, curvilinear patterns, are like great free-flowing paintings in which, through participation, the sensations of motions through space are experienced … [They] speak to us in the language of a new scale, a new attitude in which high-speed motion and the qualities of change are not mere abstract conceptions but a vital part of everyday experiences.” (Lawrence Halprin in Freeways , 1966, p.17).

"In making this award, the ASLA acknowledges the great contribution that the parkway system has made in enriching the driving experience, and allowing people access to the beauty and variety of the regions's natural landscapes. We regard parkways as American cultural treasures. In recognition of their enduring value as icons of landscape architecture, I have great pleasure in presenting this award."

Anthony Walmsley, April 2003.